Mages, ten-man raiding, and other things that are awesome.

My druid, Shae, and her original Teldrassil Sproutling! He seems to have fallen asleep. He's so lazy. He'd usually find a spot to snooze smack in the middle of the raid, preferably in fire.

I’ve been working on my various collections lately. Due to my history with changing mains, my achievement hunting has been hindered in some regards. For example, I started collecting pets with my druid and more or less had to start from scratch with Millya’s collection. This is the background story behind why I was seeking the Argent Tournament pets, so long after the Argent Tournament’s conclusion.

It happens that I think the AT pets (all of them) are some of the neatest pets in the game. My Teldrassil Sproutling was my constant companion for druid healing. It was pretty easy to just quest until I had enough Champion’s Seals to get the Alliance ones for Millya! Where I ran into some trouble was trying to get the Horde ones. Back on my old server, I’d just spent a bit of gold to buy them for my druid. This was when the Argent Tournament came out, most people were doing it every day, and that server had a healthy Horde population to match the number of people playing Alliance. My current server doesn’t have that. There aren’t very many Horde players there, period. Some of these pets are up for sale on the neutral AH (or people transfer them over) but for exorbitant prices. And why not? They do take some time and effort to obtain, and the low population keeps them fairly exclusive.

I could probably have afforded to buy them all. But I thought, there has to be a pet collector on the Horde side who also doesn’t want to spend 6000 gold per pet to get the Alliance version. I made a post on my realm forums to the effect of, “Looking for Horde to trade AT pets with.” They cost 40 Champion’s Seals each, so we could just straight up trade. Alliance pets for Horde pets!

After about five days and no replies to my thread, it wasn’t looking good. I thought I’d been too ambitious. Maybe Moonrunner’s Horde players aren’t pet collectors, or else it was so easy to obtain the pets that they’d all collected them ages ago. Then Fsob mentioned to me, “Hey, did you see someone responded to your thread?” I’d stopped checking it! A Tauren warrior had replied saying he thought he had some seals left over.

I sent him an in-game mail (Horde-side) to ask him which Alliance pets he most wanted. I didn’t think I had enough seals for all five, but I definitely could get three right away. We played a bit of message tag until Sunday, I logged in and found a message from an Alliance character of his, and the character was online. We started talking, he was mostly asking how he could get the pets to me. It was the next part that flabbergasted me.

“I don’t collect pets,” he told me, “So I don’t need them, but I have all five for you. I made a lot of money selling them before so I figure this is karma. I thought when I first replied that I could get maybe two, but it turned out I had a lot of seals on different alts.”

He wouldn’t hear of taking anything for them. His Alliance character didn’t need anything. He suggested we make the switch then, if I had time. I made my way to his character in Orgrimmar, still completely floored. There they were in the trade window, all five of the pets.

I thanked him repeatedly and told him that if nothing else he’d made a friend Alliance side and if he ever needed anything at all, I wanted to help him.

A little bit of Mulgore wildlife. Hey, Draenei can appreciate creatures from all over Azeroth, right?

This is undoubtedly the kindest thing a complete stranger has ever done for me in WoW. He suggested that if I wanted to ‘repay’ him I could just pay it forward and do the same thing for someone else Horde-side. It’ll take me a bit of time to get all the Seals and find the right person, and I just might do that, or think of something equally momentous to do. Best of all, I will not be able to take out any of the new pets without thinking of this generous Tauren and his completely unexpected gift. I think it will always make me smile, and so not only do I have new pets, they also mean something.

Has a stranger in WoW ever done something really nice and totally unexpected for you? Did you do something nice for someone else in return, or maybe even without the initial catalyst? If you find yourself inspired yourself, let me know, I’d love to read about your experiences. I like to generally believe that all people are basically good, I love when the universe tries to prove me right!

Comments on: "Random Acts of Kindness: Cross-Faction Edition" (11)

Every so often I go and hang out over in Eversong Woods or Sunstrider Isle, just watching the new toons run about. I don’t often get asked questions, but when I do, I try to help out.

When I cruise around the now ‘lower level areas’ of Outland and Azeroth, I’ll slip in an occasional heal when I see a toon struggling to defeat an enemy. I try not to interfere with the attack rotation or anything, but boosting a toon back to full always works.

I have occasionally helped out cross-faction questing, however. When you’re on a PvE server, that’s a lot easier to do. Since I can’t heal an opposing faction’s toon, I’ll just zap the extra pieces of the mob instead. (I’m sure that I’ve given a few players a heart attack that way.) For some reason that behavior really fits in Outland, where members of both factions can be on the Scryers/Aldor.

I used to help people a lot back when my main was on a PVE server, regardless of faction. Now that I’m on a PVP server, things are a little different. You can’t really help someone in the same way. And sometime, it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped…

I remember a few months ago, as a brand new lvl 85 Tauren Druid, wearing green from head to toe. I was flying through Twilight Highlands, picking up herbs, and saw a Night Elf struggling to kill a few mobs. I landed, switched to bear and taunted 2 mobs off his back while he finished a third one. I managed to kill the two mobs and, as a thank you for saving his life, he decided to take mine, /laughed and left. That was the last time I helped someone of the opposing faction.

I probably found THE jerk of the Alliance on my server but it was more than enough. On a PVP server, you don’t expect members of the opposing faction to help you when you’re in trouble, you expect them to KILL you regardless of the situation. That’s a shame because you do meet people who /thank you after saving their butt. Maybe I’m just not on the right server…

I don’t know if it counts, but back in BC times, when I was just starting wetting my toes in the world of healing and there wasn’t dual-spec yet, as a guildless Holy priest I found myself in the position to ask for help quite often (as you can imagine). I don’t know, maybe it was because healers were precious and special flowers at a time when there was no LFD tool yet, but there was always someone willing to help me, and almost always without asking anything in return.^^;

I started playing back in late Vanilla. WoW was my first RPG style game (usally a FPS player) so I was pretty clueless. I was questing out in Loch Mordan and struggling against the elite ogres in the north east. Some L60 came up and started chatting with me. He must have taken pity on me or something because at the end of our chat he hearthed, bought me gear and a blue weapon, had it all enchanted, and delivered it back to me. I couldn’t thank him enough.

I’ve tried to do that myself… find a new player just starting out to help. Unfortunately a vast majority of players I see in the lowbie area’s are rocking BoA’s or have names like “hasldfiiwnw”. Some day I’ll run across a genuinely new player and hook them up.

I’ve enjoyed those moments of helping out other players, even though it may only be something seemingly small. Like giving out free lockboxes and the end of a day of questing to whoever came by to get them. Or passing along a blue item looted from a rare kill which I really didn’t need. Quick heals to someone struggleing with some unexpected adds, or snatching something off a player running for their life.

To this day, I still play this way, with no expectations of thanks or returns.

Strange though, there always seems to be someone willing to help me when I need it.

Started in Vanilla as a questing pair on an RP server of dwarven paladin and hunter couple. Tootling around Dun Morogh, exploring this strange new world, and a level 35 or so dwarven hunter handed our hunter a load of low-level crafted leather armour for free. Then wandered off. Thanks!

Second one was a few months later, when I’d gotten my paladin to 60 and was working through the quests to get the epic mount. At that time, the training to ride was stupidly cheap, but the mounts were ~1000g to buy, which was a lot for your average toon to collect without AH farming, etc.

My dwarfette didn’t actually want the paladin mount because she said (RP server, okay?) that the horse was the wrong shape for someone who was “bottom heavy for stability”, ie., had a larger back end! She should know, since she was using the free 60% mount, since I’d not had the 30g at level 40…. Yes, it was a long time ago and a different game back then.

I’d slowly saved up 200g and counting, and completed the mount quest, but had refused to summon the mount and use it because it just didn’t feel right. I knew it’d take ages to get the other 800g, but since I didn’t raid, I had the time, and I wasn’t causing issues for anyone, so I knew I could wait.

Then a letter arrived in my paladin’s mailbox – “A non-birthday present!” containing 800g! One of my guildmates had sent me the gold I needed. I won’t go into too much more detail – I wrote the whole story up and posted it on the guild’s forums, if anyone’s interested – but she refused to take the money back, and came with me to choose the right ram.

Dude, if I ever start chasing achievements on alts, I’m going to break into cold sweats.

Innana (or Joachim) is nearly at 8k achievements with 100 mounts, The Exalted and dozens of other titles, some rare mounts, tons of raid achievements, the chopper, the grand mammoth, two expensive professions, even first aid maxed on a paladin just to get the achievements, PvP achievements, honor kill count, Arena win count…

Now that I’m looking at 8k points, I realize I don’t do holidays and now I’m starting those just to get over 9k… and pets? Maybe. Now that I don’t have mounts to chase.